**Mentions suicide**
We went to a funeral today so now’s as good as time as any to bring up the thing that brings life meaning, right?
Death’s coming at us not thick and fast but thicker and faster. Two years ago, I went to five weddings. This year, two funerals and at least one more likely before Christmas. There’s a film in there somewhere, but I don’t have the energy to think about that right now.
We know, don’t we, that we are shit at death. I like to think one of the reasons for that is that we don’t have as much practice as we use to…in the olden days…with the plagues and the wars. Although that can’t be it – there are still plagues (covid) and wars everywhere
So why, with all our conscious practice of the thing are we – as a species – so crap at it? Maybe we aren’t crap at death. Maybe we are just unbelievablly brilliant at missing people terribly when they’re gone.
I walked into the new millenium with parents, siblings, friends and all the grandparents (both on my mum’s side, my dad’d mum on his) alive and kicking
It seems a strange, and hopefully not disrespectful thing to say but I honestly believe that started to change when September 11th changed everything else.
It feels od to bring 9/11 into this given I didn’t know anyone who died or know anyone well who knew anyone who died in those attacks. But we all of us had a telly and that day we saw with our eyes thousands of people killed and later we heard with our ears them desparetly hoping they wouldn’t be. It changed things and put life and death into greater focus. And, like I say, soon after – in my life – other people started to die too.
A boyrfiend of mine around that time, a friend of his died of suicide. The last time I saw him I was hammered in a place in town now called the Stage Door. The SOul Cellar before that. What was it before that? I was sat down, slightly hazy, slightly wobbly and all I could focus on were his tree trunk thighs clad it stone washed jeans. A strong, honest, loved man who felled himself. Nobody who knew him was the same after that. People very rarely are.
My nanna’s sudden death. Painless for her. Still painful for me. Unfathomable for my grandad who started chain smoking until he died too, well before his 80th birthday.
My Grandma, 98, who just got tired I think.
My cousin’s son. Went on holiday with a friend at 18. He never came home. I don’t know my cousin well but i send her so much love everday.
My friend. Breast cancer.
And lately, two incredibly cose friends of my husbands, one died of cancer another likely suicide.
And more, and soon more, and eventually everyone.
I always thought death was an absence of life but when i went to say goodbye to a dead person once, there was something there. I could feel it. It had a gravity of it’s own. Death is something. It’s not nothing. That is, it’s something for the people left alive.
Once we’ve gone? Why would it feel any different to how it felt before we’ve arrived? Why would it feel like anything at all?
I try to use funerals as intended: as a way to remembered, rejoice, reflect, grieve. I appreciate the formality of that rite of passage. The release of the wake. That first night’s sleep after it all when you feel that the practicalities at least have been put to bed.
I spoke to one of my best friends at today’s funeral. Talked about dying wishes. Cremation for me, please. Play list to follow. Eulogy? The potted history bit? Well, it’s our friends dying that prompted me to start writing these memours – you’ll find what you need here.
The bits people add to explain what you added, what you brough to the party. ‘She wasn’t a dick;’ is what we decided today would be a good enough engraving on any gravestone. What a better place the world would be if we could all hand on heart be defined by that. At the moment, I’m at ‘She often wasn’t a dick.’. Must work on that.
I must do as well as C___who reminded me of the importance of travel, being intersted, sharing my knowledge and embracing my kids.
Of Z…who taught me the importance of loyalty, close family, helping friends with the gift of our time.
J____who reminds me to get outside each day, take my shoes off to feel the grass between my toes. I need to move my body more now that she can’t.
For Grandad, who taught me honesty, hard work, the joy in the smell of the earth.
For Grandma who taught me determination, to keep growing my mind. Tokeep learning, cos I can.
For Nanna who taught me the futility of angry arguments.
I want to write an inspiring eulogy now and spend the rest of my life trying to live up to it. There must be more to it than not being a dick.
Cogito Ergo Mum 